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House Approves Bill To Force Public Release of EPA Science (ap.org)
schwit1 quotes a report from Associated Press: House Republicans are taking aim at the Environmental Protection Agency, targeting the way officials use science to develop new regulations. A bill approved Wednesday by the GOP-controlled House would require that data used to support new regulations to protect human health and the environment be released to the public. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, said "the days of 'trust me' science are over," adding that the House bill would restore confidence in the EPA's decision-making process. Connecticut Rep. Elizabeth Esty and other Democrats said the bill would cripple EPA's ability to conduct scientific research based on confidential medical information and risks privacy violations by exposing sensitive patient data. The bill was approved 228-194 and now goes to the Senate. According to The Hill, "The bill would also require that any scientific studies be replicable, and allow anyone who signs a confidentiality agreement to view redacted personal or trade information in data."
1) The EPA's science is already released publicly.
2) This bill requires the data to be released publicly.
3) The EPA's data is already released publicly.
February 22, 2013.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Another issue is the open data requirement. It's a nice idea, but a lot of studies are done with proprietary data, and even for the ones with open data the EPA is going to have to jump through a lot of red tape to satisfy the requirements.
I can see that side of the question, but in the end, if EPA can promulgate regulations without revealing the underlying data, we're accepting the argument, "Trust us, we're your government." Are we really willing to go there? We're forced into that situation with our spy agencies. How well has that worked out for us?
I can hardly wait until the Cuyahoga burns again. You need to do a little research to see how far we have come, and how far we still need to go. Anyone up for a glass of coalmine drainage water? Kids love it! I can get a shitload of it about a half hour from here. Looks a little like orange juice. Want some?
You see, if you think you want to get rid of "Trust us we're your Government", your saying you want "Trust us, we're from the industry." That isn't how it works. The short term profit motive demand making the most money possible with the least expense. That's why we have to protect capitaism from itself. Because if they don't have to spend money on cleaning up after themselves, they won't.
Lest you think I'm some sort of tree huggger, that land around here that is ruined, is ruined forever. No lumber company is going to cut the shit timber - if there is any - and make a profit, no real estate company is going to make neighbohoods with families that drive the economy. No Wal Mart is going to build in a place that has been ruined forever, and employ people and make a profit.
Popcorn anyone?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
No. If it is not personally identifiable, you can publish it. EPA could still use a paper, that says, for example, "Of the 5000 people exposed to such-and-such-sulfate, 537 developed such-and-such-iasis." As long as it does not identify the patients.
Indeed, if doing research in the first place and making it available to the EPA was not in violation of HIPAA (or, rather, HITECH) privacy rules, the EPA can publish it further.
To pretend, this is about "privacy" is a gimmick — a spin, employed by people afraid of the sunlight shining on the darker corner of the government.
One is still at fault even if his was an honest mistake...
Whether Global Warming is, indeed, a (grave) threat to humanity remains to be seen. But we already know another blatant mistake of the governments, which has lead to the explosion of the obesity epidemics and millions of premature deaths — the War on Fat. And on cholesterol — though manufacturers are still marketing "low cholesterol" foods, the government's current stance is Cholesterol is not a nutrient of concern for overconsumption...
Though Americans — and other nations following America's lead — grew obese, no one was punished for that mistake. Without any accountability for the FDA personnel even when the fault is obvious, what is there to restraint the EPA? What "checks and balances" are there to prevent them from banning anything another "charismatic and confident" doctor suggests to ban without much proof?
The "Trust Us" science is junk science — and Congress is absolutely right to fight it, even if they are too chicken to abolish the EPA altogether.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
If that information is so restricted, then the EPA shouldn't be citing it in rule making. If they are going to impose a rule or regulation that will impact citizens and businesses, then those impacted must be able to see that science as well to challenge those rules.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Things have improved a lot since then. You can compare that to the industrial hellholes that existed in the Soviet era or China's industrial binge.
I think if we roll back the last 20 years of ADDITIONAL EPA regulation and expansion, we should be good, and we won't be a hellhole.
Trouble is the EPA SOLVED those problems it was created to solve, Then like all bureaucracies its leadership decided to keep expanding and make more and more rules beyond its original and appropriate scope. They're not being paid to keep donig exactly what they're doing... Any person who is acting as a Leader/Committee person sees their agency's role to be constantly doing more than what they've been doing.
If only I had mod points, I'd add to your +5 still further, sir AC. If only people who ranted above noted that no, it doesn't supercede HIPAA before making absurd allegations that it did, or that the EPA would itself be required to reproduce every piece of science it uses to arrive at its conclusions and rules, starting by reproducing Brahe's observations of planetary motion, Kepler's analysis, and Newton's solution just so it can use the law of gravitation when assessing the environmental impact of falling asteroids.
It is actually HIGH TIME they were held to the basic standard of science, because as it is one cannot even fight its star chamber edicts. Now, is everything it does bad? Of course not -- this bill doesn't mean that either. It just means that when it SAYS something is bad, it has be able to show that it is bad based on actual data that anybody can look at, obtained with methods that are openly published, and it has to show in some equally scientific way that its remedies to the problem (that is now proven to actually exist and be objectively serious) are at least scientifically effective if not cost-effective. How can this be a problem? How can this be viewed as some unreasonable burden? If only we held ALL government activity to such a standard! Drug laws would vanish overnight. People of alternative sexual orientation would be loudly ignored until and unless it is demonstrated scientifically that their sexual proclivities involve blood sacrifice of babies. But the commons could and will still be protected -- dumping mercury into our drinking water is an objectively demonstrably bad thing all the way down to some very small level indeed, and this permits cost-benefit analysis to be conducted on an objective basis.
Since even now a huge fraction of the artificial light we use comes from exciting mercury vapor (in both my laptop and the overhead lights in my office at this instant, for example) this issue is extremely relevant. In the real world we have to trade off many evils in order to realize a greater good. If we use incandescent lighting, the bulbs themselves have little impact but we literally burn a lot more stuff and spend in the long run a lot more money. If the EPA had completely banned mercury use ANYWHERE because all mercury used in e.g. a light bulb sooner or later makes its way into the water and/or biosphere, then we would have burned a lot more coal over the decade or so where CFL bulbs were available in parallel with incandescent. Coal (in addition to containing mercury on its own) releases bad things that cost money to remove and aren't always fully removable, and has an ecological cost to the commons mining it. It isn't OBVIOUS how to balance the interests, the costs, and the benefits here, but doing it without full transparency and open public debate is not a good solution no matter how good your intentions. The advent of LED bulbs makes this even more complex, as the LEDs are themselves doped with still OTHER toxic metals (less toxic than mercury, fortunately). They also use still less energy, and as economy of manufacturing scale kicks in so they are overwhelming cheaper as well in even a pretty damn short run, they will probably obsolete all other forms of bulb except for a few special use cases in short order, with or without regulation.
The point of which is, that decisions in the public interest, even ones in defense of the commons, are not necessarily "simple" -- they involve cost-benefit tradeoffs and often hurt a lot of people even as they (perhaps) help the majority. Government agencies in general, and to be frank government LAWS in general, should ALL be based on transparent, openly debated from a common set of assumptions and data, reasoning.
I'm frankly hopeful that this law, if passed, can be used to challenge each and every regulation throughout government based on religion. Republicans might find that what is really good medicine for all government agencies in their decision making process tastes bitter to them as it is even BETTER medicine for the legislative process itself.
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.